How Spam Became Hawaii’s Most Iconic Food

Call it comfort in a can. Spam remains a staple in Hawaiian fare, resting atop blocks of rice and wrapped in nori, diced and sprinkled into steaming bowls of saimin, and wedged between grilled pineapple slices and hamburger buns. You can almost hear the ukuleles strum as you take a bite into the apocalypse-friendly meat mashup.

While today, Spam is associated with gluttony (hey there, deep-fried Spam doughnuts!), its island history is rooted in scarcity. In Reddit’s Hawaii community, a redditor who goes by KaiKalFar464952 shared memories of the World War II era, when the product greased its way into cultural consciousness. The firsthand description of the times is eye-opening.

During the war, troops swarmed through Honolulu on their way to battles in the Pacific. “The military build up on Oahu was stifling,” writesKaiKalFar464952, who was in grade school at the time. “There were over a million servicemen there and they had to be fed so that just about all available foods produced in Hawaii went to them. The locals had to make do by their own wits, hence garden plots everywhere there was a patch of vacant land.” Gardening in the name of patriotism was a thing.

KaiKalFar464952 writes, “I remember the long lines we stood in from before daybreak in order to buy a pound of rice; of the lack of meats of any kind that resulted in people keeping chicken coops in their yards for the eggs and meat; of Spam being the only readily available ‘meat’ in the stores; of people doing a lot of fishing and crabbing to supplement their protein intake etc. Because Spam was our only available ‘meat’, people got creative and concocted a lot of different ways to prepare the stuff to disguise the fact we were still eating Spam every damn day. Humorous to think about now but not so much then.”

Resourceful Hawaiians did a damn good job inventing Spam dishes in those days—so good that the state now consumes 7 million cans of the stuff a year, according to Spam.com. There’s a food festival called Spam Jam, which attracts 25,000 people a year.

Last week, Reddit’s Hawaii community paid tribute to Barbara Funamura, the creator the first Spam musubi, who passed away at the age of 78.